Wednesday, December 2, 2009

I'd give him more, if I could

Those of you who have noticed my twitter feed on the side (the Otter Pops) might be aware that I'm doing trivia most wednesday nights at a local texmex place. Our team (The Dumb Bunnies) has been winning manically although I have less to do with that than new friend C. Most weeks it has just been the two of us but the team was founded by a colleague of mine from work. I'm his recruit, and friend C is his wife's recruit. For a few weeks it was the four of us and occassionally some of their other friends. Then after antibiotics did nothing for his "ulcer", my friend was diagnosed with stage 4 stomach cancer and is has mostly been the two of us since then with occasional cameos by the founder.

I'm sorrier than I can say that our team will be forever short of its founder. He died last wednesday shortly after finding out that the cancer had spread extensively. He was a young man in his late thirties or early forties at the most. It's quite shocking if I think about it too hard.

I'll be going to the funeral tomorrow. I don't really know anything to say, but I do have something to do. On the advice from the traffic school instructor I'm going to offer to drive his widow (yikes!) around any day she doesn't really feel like doing it herself. I'm not good at casseroles or hotdish, and she likely doesn't need cookies or ornaments. My other useful shareable skill is driving, so that's what I'll offer.

Now that I've shared this, I think I'll be able to do more blogging. I do try to keep my posts on topic and a lot of them felt subsidiary to this one but it took a while to come to be able to write it.

1 comment:

S said...

I'm so sorry to hear about your coworker's death. How awful to go so quickly from active adult in the prime of life, to dying of cancer. Good idea to help with driving around the widow -- maybe you could also offer to do any driving-based errands she's not up for (like picking up dry-cleaning or whatever). I hope the funeral wasn't too painful yesterday.

E sends her condolences too.